Student’s autonomous boat ‘Scouts’ the Atlantic

Fourth-year computer science major Dave Pimentel wrote the navigation code for Scout Transatlantic, an autonomous boat on a mission to cross the Atlantic Ocean from Rhode Island to Spain. Photo by Brooks Canaday.

When a friend with an ambi­tious goal to send an autonomous boat from Rhode Island to Spain approached David Pimentel, he jumped on the oppor­tu­nity. “He needed someone to help pro­gram the idea he had, which has to send a boat across the Atlantic,” explained Pimentel. “Right away, I was very inter­ested in doing it.”

Pimentel, a fourth-​​year com­puter sci­ence major, was tasked with coding the 13-​​foot long autonomous robotic boat, nick­named Scout, to follow a spe­cific set of latitude-​​longitude points. The oppor­tu­nity to code during co-​​op place­ments for PayPal and the mobile com­pany Run­K­eeper gave Pimentel the expe­ri­ence nec­es­sary to take on such a lofty task. The boat is depending entirely on these pre-​​programmed com­mands as well as infor­ma­tion about its envi­ron­ment col­lected through sen­sors to nav­i­gate the Atlantic.

After some trial and error, Scout was suc­cess­fully launched at 1 a.m. on Aug. 24 from Sakonnet Point in Little Compton, R.I., with a crowd of spec­ta­tors and project sup­porters in attendance.

“We had a couple of ini­tial launches fail due to dif­ferent rea­sons, but now this trip is going better than I expected,” Pimentel said.

The team’s other six mem­bers were respon­sible for cre­ating the web appli­ca­tion used to track the boat, pro­gram­ming com­mu­ni­ca­tions soft­ware, form con­struc­tion, and com­po­nent fab­ri­ca­tion, among other aspects. The boat’s bat­tery is pow­ered by solar panels, sim­ilar to how a motor­cycle bat­tery oper­ates. Since Scout only moves as a modest one mile per hour, on average, Pimentel and his team antic­i­pate the trip will take another six to 12 weeks.

“We would like to prove that this is pos­sible, and some­thing that can be used in a research set­ting,” he said. “The ability to send a boat out to a cer­tain point in the ocean to col­lect data, without needing to send a team, would be both cost and time effective.”

Out­side of the poten­tial research impli­ca­tions of a suc­cessful trip, the team has already believed to have beaten the world record for the far­thest dis­tance trav­eled by an autonomous boat. The pre­vious record for the length of time spent on the water by an autonomous boat attempting a transat­lantic trip was set in 2010 by a vessel that trav­eled only 61 miles off the coast of Ire­land. Scout has already passed this pre­vious marker by nearly 30-​​fold.

“This has been a really exciting project to be a part of,” Pimentel said. “We’ve proven that it’s pos­sible, and if we can, we’re going to do it again.”

About the Writer

Jordana Torres, CAMD ’12, held a co-op position in Northeastern’s Office of Marketing and Communications in 2011 and has returned as the department’s Project Manager. She has worked in the nonprofit field and in PR, and has found the perfect medium in higher education. Outside of work, she enjoys discovering new restaurants, watching corny horror movies, and playing with puppies.

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